Learn from Legion

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Legion

Oderint dum metuant
THIS IS THE FIRST POST IN A MULTI-TOPIC THREAD - PLEASE DON'T FIXATE ON ANY SINGLE TOPIC​



Mail-in voting is a throwback to the dark old days of vote-buying and fraud.

Because of this, many countries don’t allow in-country absentee ballots.

Concerns about vote-buying and fraud have a long history in the U.S.

They helped drive the move to the secret ballot, which all U.S. states adopted between 1888 and 1950.

Secret ballots made it harder for vote buyers to monitor which candidates sellers actually voted for.

Vote-buying had been pervasive; research at the University of Florida has found that voter turnout fell by 8% to 12% after states adopted the secret ballot.

DEMOCRATS now claim that voter fraud is essentially nonexistent.

The Carter report found otherwise.

Intimidation and vote buying were key concerns of the Carter commission: “Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation. Vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.”

The report provides examples, such as the 1997 Miami mayoral election that resulted in 36 arrests for absentee-ballot fraud. The election had to be rerun, and the result was reversed.

There are more recent cases, too.

In 2017 an investigation of a Dallas City Council election found over 700 fraudulent mail-in ballots signed by the same witness using a fake name. The discovery left two council races in limbo, and the fraud was much larger than the vote differential in one of those races. The case resulted in criminal convictions.

It is often claimed that impossibly large numbers of people live at the same address.

In 2016, 83 registered voters in San Pedro, Calipornia, received absentee ballots at the same small two-bedroom apartment.

Since politically-motivated prosecutors in Blue urban shitholes rarely pursue this type of case, DEMOCRAT "fact-checkers" claim that fraud is nonexistent, and leftists swallow and regurgitate the lie because it fits their agenda.




https://www.wsj.com/articles/heed-jimmy-carter-on-the-danger-of-mail-in-voting-11586557667
 
Ben Shapiro: Rules for Debating a Leftist

1. Walk Toward the Fire

“The left knows this is war. And they know you are the enemy. You will be castigated. You will get punched. That’s the way it will go because that’s how the left wins: through intimidation and cruelty. You have to take the punch, you have to brush it off. You have to be willing to take the punch.”

2. Hit First

“Don’t take the punch first. Hit first. Hit hard. Hit where it counts. Mike Tyson used to say, “Everybody has a plan ‘til they get punched in the mouth.” That’s exactly correct. But throwing the first punch requires game-p*lan*ning. Walking through the door, you have one shot – one! – to put someone down for the count from the beginning of a debate. If done properly, any debate on a single topic can be over within the first 30 seconds.”

3. Frame Your Opponent

"The left’s entire playbook consists of a single play: characterizing the opposition. It’s incredibly effective. And the only way to get beyond character arguments is to frame your opponent – make it toxic for your opponent to slur you. Then, hopefully, you can move the debate to more substantive territory. This is the vital first step. It is the only first step. There is no way to convince someone that you don’t hate him or her. You can convince him or her, however, that your opposition is a liar.”

4. Frame the Debate

“It’s important that you neuter those buzzwords quickly, because otherwise you will be arguing against nonsense terms that can be used against you. You can’t argue against empty terms. So don’t accept the premises of their arguments, which are largely buzzword based. It’s important that you neuter those buzzwords quickly, because otherwise you will be arguing against nonsense terms that can be used against you. You can’t argue against empty terms. So don’t accept the premises of their arguments, which are largely buzzword based. As a general matter, the left’s favorite three lines of attack are (1) you’re stupid; (2) you’re mean; (3) you’re corrupt. Take away those lines of attack and watch the discomfort set in.”

5. Spot Inconsistencies in the Left’s Argument

“The left’s arguments are full of inconsistencies. Internal inconsistencies are inherent in the left’s general worldview. That’s because very few people on the left will acknowledge their actual agenda, which is quite extreme. Leftists prefer to argue half-measures in which they don’t truly believe. There are almost invariably unbridgeable inconsistencies in the left’s publicly stated positions that are at war with their actual fundamental principles. Your goal is to make the left admit once and for all what they believe by exposing those inconsistencies.”

6. Force Leftists to Answer Questions

Leftists are only comfortable when they are forcing you to answer questions. If they have to answer questions, they begin to scratch their heads. The questions they prefer to ask are about character; the questions they prefer not to answer are all of them. Instead, they like to dodge issues in favor of character arguments.”

7. Do Not Get Distracted

“You may notice when arguing with someone on the left that every time you begin to make a point, that leftist begins shouting about Trump. It’s like Leftist Tourette’s Syndrome. “Why did Biden blow out the budget?” “TRUMP!*!!!!” Don’t be fooled. You don’t need to follow the idiotic rabbit down into his rabbit hole. Arguing with the left is like attempting to nail jello to the wall. It’s slippery and messy and a waste of resources. You must force them to answer the question.”

8. You Don’t Have To Defend People

“Conservatives get trapped in this gambit routinely, because they figure that if the left is attacking someone, they must be worth defending. But that’s not true. Don’t follow people. Follow principle.”

9. If You Don’t Know Something, Admit It

“Don’t get caught in the trap of believing you have to know everything. Your opponent will undoubtedly know something you don’t. It’s fair to simply state, “I didn’t know that, but I’ll be happy to research it.” Another side-note here: don’t bring up a topic with which you aren’t passingly familiar.”

10. Let the Other Side Have Meaningless Victories

“Leftists prize participation trophies above all else; by granting them a point or two, you can convince them that you aren’t a (insert derogatory characterization) at all. If the left engages you on immigration reform, your answer should be that you are for immigration reform. Now, how do they define immigration reform? That’s the key question. But because you’ve granted the premise that you like the idea of immigration reform, you don’t look like a naysayer off the bat. The conversation is meaningless until you force the left to define terms.”



https://cheatography.com/deleted-2754/cheat-sheets/ben-shapiro-rules-for-debating-a-leftist/
 
Edward Bernays, the Father of American Propaganda

Propaganda: “a message designed to persuade its intended audience to think and behave in a certain manner. Thus advertising is commercial propaganda. Or institutionalized and systematic spreading of information and/or disinformation, usually to promote a narrow political or religious (or commercial) viewpoint.”

Edward Bernays was surprisingly transparent when sharing his perspective.

Our modern notion that propaganda is the manipulation or purposeful misleading of the public came about after World War I (1914-1918).

It was immediately after World War I that the governments of Britain and America were found guilty of large-scale manipulation of the public to gain and increase support for their schemes.

Naturally, the power of what we now call propaganda was revealed as the result of the work of both the American and British governments.

That genie could never be put back in the bottle.

One of the men who saw the power of propaganda and actually believed in its necessity in the 20th century was Edward Bernays. He is considered by many to be the “father of public relations”.

In his seminal book Propaganda, Bernays expands upon his thinking about what propaganda is, its "necessity" in our modern, complex societies, and how it is best used for business and government.

Below are 15 powerful quotes from his book:

1). "Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

2). "The groupings and affiliations of society today are no longer subject to ‘local and sectional’ limitations."

3). "Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment … But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought."

4). "Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group."

5). "Only through the active energy of the intelligent few can the public at large become aware of and act upon new ideas."

6). "There may be a handful of men who control the educational methods of the great majority of our schools."

7). "The new profession of public relations has grown up because of the increasing complexity of modern life and the consequent necessity for making the actions of one part of the public understandable to other sectors of the public."

8). "It is futile to attempt to sell an idea or to prepare the ground for a product that is basically unsound."

9). "For in many instances only by a careful system of constant, thorough and frank information will the public understand and appreciate the value of what a merchant, educator or statesman is doing."

10). "Propaganda, like economics and sociology, can never be an exact science for the reason that its subject-matter, like theirs, deals with human beings."

11). "If you influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway."

12). "Business does not willingly accept dictation from the public. It should not expect that it can dictate to the public."

13). "The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion."

14). "Political campaigns today are all sideshows, all honors, all bombast, glitter, and speeches."

15). "Ours must be a leadership democracy administered by the intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the masses."


https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/15-thoughts-father-modern-propaganda/
 
Education in America: The Decline of Intellect

This was written in 1969. That's how long the left has been destroying the ability to think in the West.

The lowered ethical standards of our age have been matched by a decline of intellect.

Today, we place progressively less faith in man’s intellectual powers, substituting a faith in institutionalized arrangements and methods. If we would help our young to develop and implement proper values in their lives, we must first recover the intellectual integrity to distinguish between good and bad.

Such intellectual integrity rests upon a firm belief that man can think, and that no genuine substitute exists for human thought.

If the school is to transmit the intellectual and cultural heritage, and develop in students a proper sense of morality, it must begin by teaching them to think.

Conversely, if we would help our young people to think, we must provide a cultural and moral framework within which their intellectual capacities may be exercised.

Yet, this disciplined thought is precisely what is lacking in the home and the school.

Within the existing educational framework, moral and philosophic questions tend to be handled with the neutrality of "scientific objectivity."

As the result, our children are provided no philosophic basis for their own thinking.

Instead, they take on the protective coloration of the dominant social mores—a form of "social adjustment" which places a premium upon non-thinking.

Small wonder that our age of shrinking values also becomes the age of shrinking intellect.



https://fee.org/articles/education-in-america-4-the-decline-of-intellect/
 
Debunking Tradition, While Demanding Its Fruits

It is not quite fair to say that today’s intellectual leaders have no values.

Although they are extremely skeptical about values and emphasize that skepticism in all their works, many modern "intellectuals" do have their own underlying value system which C. S. Lewis sharply called into question:

"It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence.

It is not so.

They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardor to pursue her.

Indeed it would be strange if they were: a preserving devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honor, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which they could debunk as easily as any other.

It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out.

Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

And all the time—such is the tragicomedy of our situation—we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function.

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.

We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."
 
"There Is No Truth"

What are some of the philosophic underpinnings of the educational system now reaping such a bitter harvest?

One of the most basic principles of the pragmatism and instrumentalism which infects our schools and our social order is that the truth of an idea is measurable only by the consequences to which it leads.

If the consequences of an idea are good, then the proposition is true. How do we measure good consequences?

The good, so we are told by the instrumentalists, is that which achieves the proper social ends.

Does the individual have judgment in this matter?

Is there some divine sanction by which we can evaluate such ends? The modern answer to both questions is "No."

The measure of good is now exclusively social, eliminating individual judgment, eliminating any fixed standard of right and wrong, and indeed eliminating the very concept of truth.

The fact that a modern intellectual no longer searches for truth should not be construed to mean that he no longer searches for knowledge. The distinction comes in the fact that his search for knowledge evidences no interest in any ultimate reality beyond the immediate work-ability of an idea.

Any value without direct application to the here and the now is considered pointless and unworthy of transmission as "knowledge."

Most men who have lived in Western civilization have premised their thinking upon the presence of a higher reality, dimly perceived yet serving as the basis for all human endeavor.

That human endeavor was an attempt to discover and live in consonance with that higher reality through the use of man’s unique capacity to reason.

The modern intellectual, applying "scientific" methods and standards to his investigation, finds no evidence of such a higher reality or any higher side of man as reflected in the individual.

Thus, man comes to be viewed as nothing more than a creature engaged in the process of adaptation to his environment, a creature possessing neither soul nor mind in the sense in which Western humankind has developed the concept.

The intellect itself, the individual's very capacity to think, is finally called into question.
 
No Use for the Mind

Today’s educational framework affords no place for the mind.

The concept of mind always demanded discipline on the part of the individual if the fruits of their intellectual processes were to command the attention and respect of their fellows.

But in today’s denial of mind, the new keys to personality are assumed to be composed exclusively of emotional factors, psychological "adjustment," and materialistic creature necessities.

"Adjust to your environment," young people are constantly told. Such a denial of intellect has the effect of lowering standards for society as a whole while robbing each of us of the essence of individuality.

Thought, if granted any validity at all, has come to be regarded as a rather mechanical process, measurable, and computable.

The social engineers predict that such intellectual concentrations will be beneficial to mankind as a whole and to each individual as well. The idea advanced by Julian Huxley of a "thought bank" is considered by them in all seriousness.

To an inquiry of the failing New York Times in 1958, one of the scientists consulted about the socio-intellectual aspects of the year 2000, one scientist answered that there would be no conflict among the thinking of individuals because "a common Thought Bank will be established from which all will receive instructions and to which all may repair in case of doubt."
 
A Brief History of Identity Marxism




The twisted ideology that is most often identified as “Woke” is much more accurately described as Identity Marxism.

Woke is a Marxian approach to identity politics for the same destructive aims Marxism has always touted.

Critical Race Theory is Marxist; Gender Theory is Marxist; Queer Theory Marxist; Women's Studies is Marxist; Postcolonial Theory is Marxist.

Intersectionality is Marxism: Identity Marxism.

In this podcast, James Lindsay walks the listener through a history of the Marxist thought.
 
A new book reveals how the troika of Fauci, Birx, and Redfield hijacked America

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Legion said:
In 2017 an investigation of a Dallas City Council election found over 700 fraudulent mail-in ballots signed by the same witness using a fake name
Click to expand...

given that lib'ruls tell us repeatedly that this never happens......are you sure that the WSJ is not giving us fake news?......I mean, the lib'ruls wouldn't lie to us would they?......
 
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